The week ahead was a brutal mix of training and tweaking. Every second of the schedule was carefully planned and maintained with the help of Tomás and Park, especially with Park having expertise by proxy from their instructor's heritage.However, the accident with Doran had left a harsh reminder that power without control was just another way to fall short. In response to the hard lesson, Osei, Miller, and I took a much more hands-on approach in our styles of teaching.Ether Strike training was restricted to the small group who had already begun making progress: myself, Sato, two of Miller’s Vanguard pilots. Everyone else was pulled back to fundamentals.The first two days were the hardest.Sato managed to get a clean release on the third attempt on the second day. It wasn’t strong, but it was controlled. He whooped loud enough that half the yard turned to look.“See? Told you I was talented.”“The only thing you’re talented at is making noise,” Jin muttered from across the ring.“I heard that, asshole!” Sato yelled back across the yard.“You were supposed to.”Miller watched from the edge of the training area with his arms crossed. He never joined the Ether Strike group again after the first day. Instead, he drilled his Vanguard relentlessly on shield rotations and heavy engagement patterns. I respected the decision; Miller knew both his strengths and his squad.Osei, on the other hand, threw himself into coordination drills. His deviation was the platoon’s greatest asset, and he knew it. By the third day, we were running full-platoon movement exercises where Osei’s network fed real-time positioning data through his link. We had gotten some practice using it in the simulation prior, but it was still a little clumsy.I chalked it up to Osei not being used to connecting to so many people at once, even with the extra set of eyes and hands in Ren and Tomás. The mental load must have been overbearing. (...)